Gotta Go Lean Blog

Natural Born Leader Myth

The Myth of the Natural Born Leader

The term ‘Natural Born Leader’ is a myth. You aren’t born with leadership skills. You may be born attractive, tall, muscular. You may be gifted by your parents with a brain that fires a lot more neurons than the typical person. Of course, you also may be born to end up bald with hands that sweat profusely when you get even the slightest bit nervous. So, yes. The deck can be genetically stacked in favor Read more…

A Simple Way to Start Building a Continuous Improvement Culture

Spend more than 5 minutes with a Lean consultant, and you will hear about building a “continuous improvement culture.” That’s because it is one of the bedrocks of any philosophy about improving an organization. You’ve got to have people committed to change, that believe in the tools to make change happen, and that have faith in their leadership. Sounds simple, right? Well, it is and it isn’t. Does that clarify things? What I mean by Read more…

Building a continuous improvement culture
A lesson in data collection and data analysis

Never Trust a Windfall: A Lesson on Data Collection and Analysis

One of the things I teach people when doing data collection and analysis is to be suspicious whenever anything unexpected happens. If you suddenly see a major uptick in your productivity numbers or a monumental drop in your defect rate, make sure you understand why, or it WILL come back to bite you. Here’s a case in point. Wasatch County, in Utah, recently held an emergency council meeting to deal with a budget shortfall. Now, Read more…

You’ll NEVER “Find” Time for Continuous Improvement

There’s a common question among people new to Lean. As they become familiar with what this continuous improvement philosophy has to offer, they realize that it will also come at a steep cost in terms on the investment of time. They realize that there is a lot of learning and practicing to be done. Because continuous improvement cultures require broad acceptance, everyone in the organization needs training. People in specialize roles will need even more Read more…

How Do You Define Success?

I was taking a break recently and was perusing my FaceBook feed. One post in particular caught my attention. “Anyone know how to blog successfully?” Without stating the obvious, since you are reading this on what I like to think is a blog with at least a shred of success, I replied. Now if you know me from my writings or if you’ve worked with me, you might be able to figure out what my Read more…

Don’t Be a Servant to the Lean Tools

One of the great things about Lean is that it is chock full of tools. Unfortunately, this can also create a problem for some people. Because there are so many great tools, they immediately reach for one of those tools before really thinking about the problem they are facing. In these cases, having so many quick and easy choices can be a barrier to improvement. They are trying to fit the problem to the tool Read more…

lean tools
compromising on a project

Compromise is a Failure in Continuous Improvement

There’s a general feeling that compromise is a good thing. In most cases, in the real world where relationships is the ‘product’, it is. Compromising on how you pick movies, or who does what chores, or selecting meals is pretty important in relationships. But at work, compromise is generally a failure. That’s because relationships are a means to an end. Good relationships are important at work, but you don’t judge a company’s performance by how Read more…

Seleting a Kaizen Team

Selecting a Kaizen Team

An important part of conducting a continuous improvement event is selecting a kaizen team that is strong and will get great results. The following factors all play a role. Scope Too few people for the scope of the project and you won’t finish. Too many and you’ll have a lot of bored, unproductive people. Project Focus You have to decide if this project is going to be geared towards getting lots of results, or towards Read more…